The school cafeteria was a sea of controlled noise. Trays clattered, students laughed at appropriate volumes, and the sunlight streamed through the high windows in perfect, dust-free shafts.
I sat across from Kenji. He was tearing a piece of bread into perfectly equal squares, a habit he'd had since we were kids.
"Do you ever feel… off?" I asked. I tried to keep my voice casual, but the words felt heavy, like stones dropping into a still pool.
Kenji didn't look up. "Off how? Like a cold?"
"No," I leaned in, my voice dropping to a whisper. "Like you're thinking too much. Like there's a script we're all following, and if you stop to look at the pages, everything starts to feel… fake."
Kenji's hand froze. The bread square remained mid-air. He slowly looked up, and for the first time, I saw it—the "Harmony" in his eyes was gone. Instead, there was a raw, naked flicker of terror.
"Watched?" he whispered, repeating a word I hadn't even said yet. He laughed, but it was a dry, hacking sound. "Come on, man. You're overthinking. You always do this."
"But Kenji, look at them," I gestured vaguely at the room. "The construction workers lifting steel beams like they're paper. The teachers who never get angry. The way the health machines 'recalibrate' the moment they see something they don't like. Doesn't it feel strange?"
Kenji's eyes darted to the corner of the ceiling—to the small, black dome of the surveillance camera. A bead of sweat broke from his hairline and traced a slow path down his temple.
"This is the best society we could ask for," Kenji said. His voice was louder now, as if he wanted the cameras to hear him. "No wars. No hunger. No chaos. What more do you want, Kael?"
"I want to know why I broke my bed just by standing up," I hissed. "I want to know why Mom 'concluded' like a broken machine."
Kenji suddenly stood up. His tray rattled, the sound echoing too loudly in the sudden lull of the room. His face was pale, his lips trembling.
"Hey, uh—I remembered something," he said, his voice shaking. "I have to go. I'll see you in class."
"Kenji, wait—"
He didn't wait. He didn't even look back. He moved through the crowd with a desperate speed, pushing past students as if he were trying to outrun a shadow.
I sat back, my chest tightening. I looked down at my tray. My thumb had pressed into the plastic edge of the tray—not hard, or so I thought—but the thick material had curled and whitened under my grip, deformed like soft wax.
I let go immediately, hiding my hand under the table. Around me, the cafeteria noise returned to its perfect, melodic hum. But as I looked at Kenji's empty seat, I realized that the "Peace" of our city wasn't a gift. It was a demand.
And Kenji was too afraid to even look at the bill.
The afternoon sun hit the classroom at a precise angle, illuminating the dust motes that seemed to float in pre-determined patterns.
I sat at my desk, my muscles still humming from the encounter with Kenji in the cafeteria. My thumb traced the deformed edge of the plastic tray in my mind—a reminder that my body was becoming a stranger to me.
At the front of the room, Mrs. Vane was writing on the board. The chalk moved with a rhythmic skritch-skritch-skritch. Her lines were impossibly straight, her handwriting so perfect it looked like a digital font.
"The foundation of our society," she said, her voice a soothing, melodic hum, "is the understanding that individuality is the parent of conflict. By aligning our goals, we eliminate the friction of existence."
She turned around. Her smile was wide, showing teeth that were a shade too white.
"Class," she prompted, her eyes scanning the room. "Why do we value the present over the past?"
Usually, a few students would raise their hands. A few would murmur an answer. But today, something was different. Perhaps it was because of the "Health Evaluation" earlier, or perhaps the "curtain" was simply thinning.
The entire class—thirty students—shifted in their seats at the exact same moment. The sound of thirty chairs scraping against the floor combined into a single, sharp screech.
"We have peace in the present," they said.
The words didn't come in a wave or a tumble. They hit the air as one single, unified voice. Thirty throats, one sound.
"Is that enough?" Mrs. Vane asked, her head tilting slightly to the left.
"It is enough," the class responded.
I felt a cold shiver race down my spine. My mouth stayed shut, my jaw locked tight. I looked at the girl to my right—Sarah. She was a girl I'd known for years. She liked drawing birds. But now, her eyes were fixed on the back of the student in front of her, her expression as blank and polished as a marble statue.
Mrs. Vane's eyes landed on me. The "Harmony" in the room seemed to curdled.
"Kael?" she asked. Her smile didn't falter, but her eyes narrowed just a fraction of a millimeter. "You didn't join the chorus. Is your throat bothering you?"
The silence that followed was heavy. I could feel thirty pairs of eyes—even though they weren't looking at me—focusing their collective weight on my skin.
"I was just thinking, Ma'am," I said, my voice sounding like a gunshot in the quiet.
"Thinking is good," Mrs. Vane said, her voice dropping an octave. She began to walk toward my desk, her footsteps perfectly silent on the carpet. "But thinking alone is lonely. Why don't you share your thoughts with us? Why did you ask about the past this morning?"
"I just wondered where we came from," I whispered.
Mrs. Vane stopped at the edge of my desk. She leaned down, the scent of her perfume—a cloying, artificial lily—filling my lungs.
"You silly boy," she chuckled. It wasn't a warm sound. It was the sound of a lid closing on a box. "We came from the chaos. And we have no desire to go back. Do we, class?"
"No, Ma'am," the thirty voices replied.
I stared at my notebook. My hands were trembling under the desk. The pressure in my chest was roaring now, a physical heat that made the air feel like it was boiling.
I realized then that I wasn't just in a school. I was in a hive. And I was the only one who didn't know the song.